Connecticut Medicaid Won't Pay for ABA Parent Training by Telehealth
A July 10 CT BHP alert says parent training must be in person, with or without the child present. Out-of-state providers count as in-state only if they live within 45 minutes of the border, and enrollment takes four to eight weeks.
The Connecticut Behavioral Health Partnership's Provider Alert PA-2026-06, issued July 10, 2026, is mostly about who handles what in HUSKY Health autism enrollment. One line in it changes practice: “Parent training (with or without the member present) is not permitted via telehealth and must be conducted in person.”
Other ASD services may be delivered by synchronous audio-video telehealth “only for procedure codes permitted in the CMAP Telehealth Table,” and the alert sets in-person care as the expectation “to the fullest extent that is clinically appropriate.”
The turn: no child in the room, still no video
The ban holds even when the child isn't in the session, which is the case where remote delivery looks most natural. States are going different ways here. Vermont's Medicaid authorized telehealth for 97155, 97156 and 97157 when it rewrote its ABA coding last year.
Enrollment: two agencies, one residence rule
- DSS and Gainwell handle enrollment and claims only. Carelon BH CT handles qualification only, and “cannot provide enrollment status updates, expedite processing, activate enrollment, or address claims issues.”
- Processing “may take 4-8 weeks.” Enrollment isn't complete until the follow-on documents, including Carelon's qualification letter, are submitted.
- Out-of-state providers are treated as in-state border providers “only if the provider's home residence is within a commutable distance of the Connecticut state line—45 minutes for initial enrollment and re-enrollment.” It's “based on the provider's home address, not the office location.”
- Qualification needs, among other things, two sample behavior support plans with functional assessments and, if not covered by an agency policy, liability insurance of at least $500,000 per occurrence and $1.5 million aggregate.
The limits
The alert doesn't list parent training by CPT code. It says “parent training,” which in practice means 97156 and 97157. It gives no separate effective date, so treat it as in force since July 10. A February 2026 alert (PA-2026-02) separately says diagnostic evaluations by BCBAs or provisionally licensed clinicians don't meet requirements “even if co-signed by a licensed professional.”
What you must know or do
- Clinical directors: list every HUSKY client whose 97156 or 97157 sessions run by video and move them to in-person sessions.
- Billers: check claims since July 10 for parent training billed with a telehealth place of service or modifier. Those are the ones exposed.
- Owners hiring across the state line: check each clinician's home address, not the office's, against the 45-minute rule before starting enrollment, and allow eight weeks.